PURPOSE
Allied health students began the pharmacology course on a different
schedule, resulting in a timetable that was misaligned with other cohorts and
creating curricular gaps. Since foundational pharmacology concepts are vital
for understanding later coursework, these students required earlier and more
structured exposure to those foundational concepts. To offer a more flexible
way to build this foundation, we provided an asynchronous online introductory
pharmacology course, with in-person sessions planned later in the course. We
hypothesized that a well-structured blended approach combining asynchronous
online learning with in-person classes would be more effective than in-person
instruction alone for teaching fundamental concepts of
pharmacokinetics/pharmacodynamics (PK/PD).
METHODS
Data were collected over two years from two cohorts of allied health
students. The first cohort received two rounds of in-person PK/PD
instruction. The second cohort completed a well-designed, prepared-in-advance
asynchronous online PK/PD module and subsequently received in-person
instruction. Student performance served as the outcome measure. Data were
analyzed using GraphPad Prism with an unpaired two-tailed t-test.
RESULTS
All students completed the course (12 in Cohort 1; 11 in Cohort 2). On an
assessment targeting foundational PK/PD concepts, students in the
blended-learning format outperformed peers who received two separate rounds
of in-person PK/PD instruction (p = 0.0059). Across the remaining course
assessments, performance between cohorts was generally comparable, with the
blended-learning group showing greater score variability. Only one additional
assessment demonstrated higher performance among students in the
blended-learning cohort.
CONCLUSION
The blended-learning approach provided increased flexibility and improved
student performance on foundational pharmacology concepts. The greater
variability observed in the blended cohort may reflect differences in
learning styles, engagement, or participation in the online environment.
Overall, this study enhances my growth as a pedagogue and informs ongoing
quality improvement in my teaching practice through intentionally designed
blended-learning strategies in pharmacology education.